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Margin 269on his way back to the estate by train; he had permitted himself aslowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. Thatafternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney anddiscussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of hisestate, he returned to the book in the tranquillity of his study whichlooked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favoritearmchair, its back toward the door—even the possibility of anintrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it—he let hisleft hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set toreading the final chapters.(Cortázar 1967:63)Blackburn’s translation has all the hallmarks of fluency—linearsyntax, univocal meaning, current usage—easily setting up the “he”as the position from which the narrative is intelligible, the descriptiontrue, the setting real. The translation is also quite close to the Spanishtext, except for one telling deviation: the parenthetical remark inBlackburn’s last sentence revises the Spanish. Cortázar’s text reads,“de espaldas a la puerta que lo hubiera molestado como una irritanteposibilidad de intrusiones” (in a close version, “with his back to thedoor which annoyed him like an irritating possibility of intrusions”).Blackburn’s revision adds the aside, “had he thought of it,” whichsuddenly shifts to a new discursive level, a different narrative pointof view, at once omniscient and authorial, identifying the “he” as acharacter in Cortázar’s text and briefly undermining the realist illusionestablished in the previous sentences. Blackburn’s fluent translationpossesses considerable stylistic refinement, present even in this subtlerevision, an addition to the Spanish that is very much in tune withCortázar’s narrative technique.Blackburn’s choices show him strengthening the realist illusionwhen the narrative suddenly shifts to the description of the novel,positioning the reader in the lovers, erasing the line betweenfiction and reality. But then—following the Spanish text closely—he momentarily redraws that line by using literary terms todescribe the novel (“dialogue/diálogo,” “pages/páginas”) and bymaking a tacit reference to the reading businessman (“one felt/se sentía”):The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, hisface cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched theblood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not